Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Louise Brooks related text: Need help translating from Russian

In my search to document all things related to the actress and her legacy, I have come across all kinds of interesting material in languages which I don't read. That material includes articles,  advertisements, and other miscellaneous clippings from non-English language newspapers published in the United States. In fact, there were many such "ethnic" newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, including those published in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Yiddish, and Russian. I have found Louise Brooks-related material in each language.

Can any good soul translate or summarize the first two clippings from a Russian-language newspaper? Each related to the debut of Pandora's Box in the United States in December of 1929.




Thursday, November 22, 2018

Louise Brooks Society books - Black Friday #silentfilm specials

Looking for something good to read? In search of that special gift for the silent film fan on your Holiday shopping list?

The Louise Brooks Society is pleased to let everyone know that for a limited time (Thanksgiving November 22 through Cyber Monday November 26, 2018) each of the following titles are available at a special discounted price. And what's more, the LBS will pay the tax and ship the book for free (within the United States). The LBS accepts PayPal and major credit cards through it's safe and secure PayPal account. Click on a button below to place an order. Want a special inscription? Place a note in your order, and we'll be happy to oblige.

Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star (softcover 1st edition)
by Thomas Gladysz
-- This new 296 page book brings together 15 years work by the Director of the Louise Brooks Society. Gathered here are the author's best articles, essays, reviews and blogs about the silent film star and her films: Beggars of Life, Pandora’s Box, and Diary of a Lost Girl are discussed, as are many other little known aspects of Brooks’ legendary career. With dozens of illustrations, many rare.  AUTOGRAPHED by the author.


Regular price $22.50 // now just $19.00 (includes shipping & handling within the USA)
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Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film (softcover 1st edition)
by Thomas Gladysz
-- This first ever study of Beggars of Life looks at the film Oscar-winning director William Wellman thought his finest silent movie. With more than 50 little seen images, and a foreword by William Wellman, Jr. A must have addition to your library, and an essential companion to the KinoLorber DVD/Blu-ray. AUTOGRAPHED by the author.



Regular price $13.50 // now just $9.00 (includes shipping & handling within the USA)

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Now We're in the Air (softcover 1st edition)
by Thomas Gladysz

This companion to the once "lost" 1927 film tells the story of the film’s making, its reception, and its discovery by film preservationist Robert Byrne. With two rare fictionalizations of the movie story, more than 75 little seen images, detailed credits, trivia, and a foreword by Byrne. AUTOGRAPHED by the author.


Regular price $17.50 // now just  $14.00 (includes shipping & handling within the USA)


Looking for more great reads and more great deals?
Check out the "Related Books for Sale" Page.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Beggars of Life will be showing in Sydney, Australia on 25 November

Beggars of Life, the acclaimed William Wellman directed silent film starring Louise Brooks, will be showing in the Metcalfe Auditorium at the State Library NSW in Sydney, Australia on November 25. Further information on this special event can be found HERE. Tickets can be purchased HERE. (Thanks to longtime LBS member Camille Scaysbrook for the tip on this happening.)



Want to learn more about Louise Brooks and Beggars of Life? Last Spring saw the release of my well reviewed new book, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, and last Summer saw the release of a new DVD / Blu-ray of the film from Kino Lorber. (The DVD, featuring the best copy of the film available anywhere, also includes a commentary by your's truly!) If you haven't secured a  copy of either the book or the DVD / Blu-ray, why not do so today? Each is an essential addition to your Louise Brooks collection. And what's more, my book (but not the DVD) is available around the world on Amazon, including Amazon Australia.

Monday, November 19, 2018

Louise Brooks text: Need help translating from Hungarian

Louise Brooks' films were shown all around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, including in Hungary. In my search to document all things related to the actress and her legacy, I have come across all kinds of interesting material in languages which I don't read.

Can any good soul translate or summarize this clipping from a Hungarian newspaper? It seems to be a sort of "people in the news" feature like those we see today.

By the way, to the left of Louise Brooks is Bruno Walter (1876 – 1962), is the German-born pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Földes Bandi, pictured at the top of the piece, was a musical prodigy who played the piano. I couldn't find anything more about him for certain, though he may be the same young Jewish man who died at Auschwitz. I have not been able to identify the man to the right of Louise Brooks. Can anyone?


Saturday, November 17, 2018

Louise Brooks tribute centerpiece of inaugural silent film festival in Bainbridge, WA

The Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day celebration of silent film, will show two seldom exhibited Louise Brooks' films, It’s the Old Army Game (1926), starring W. C. Fields, and the surviving fragment of Now We’re in the Air (1927). For the latter film, this special event marks the film's first screening in the Pacific Northwest in nearly 90 years! And what's more, Louise Brooks adorns the festival poster.




The two-film Louise Brooks tribute, a kind of centerpiece to the two day festival, will take place on November 17 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge, Washington.

The Festival is a tribute to the late Frank Buxton (1930-2018), a local resident and longtime champion, advocate and appreciator of the arts. He was also a fan of Louise Brooks. Programming for the Festival was curated by Frank's friend and program collaborator John Ellis in partnership with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. More information HERE. The Bainbridge Island Review ran a piece on the event; read that piece HERE.

In celebration of the festival, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art's Orientation Gallery will feature a three-week exhibition of rare and historical posters, photos and ephemera from the silent film era from Buxton’s own extensive private collection.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

CMBA Fall Blogathon featuring the 1927 Louise Brooks' film The City Gone Wild

The theme of the 2018 CMBA Fall Blogathon is Outlaws, which I am stretching to include gangsters and the criminal underworld (i.e. those outside the law). The focus of this blog is the 1927 Louise Brooks film The City Gone Wild.


Now considered a lost film, The City Gone Wild is a terse crime drama, with gangsters, gangs, and gunfights, in which a criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge the death of a friend. As she did in The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise Brooks plays a moll, this time the deliciously named Snuggles Joy, the “gunman’s honey.”

The story, by Charles & Jules Furthman, goes like this: “With the outbreak of city gang wars between Gunner Gallagher and Lefty Schroeder, criminal lawyer John Phelan, feared in the underworld, brings temporary peace, while district attorney Franklin Ames investigates. Nada Winthrop, daughter of a powerful capitalist, is sought by both men. Though Nada loves John, she disapproves of his criminal practice; and when he frees Gunner Gallagher on bail, she announces her engagement to Ames. When Ames discovers that her father is the secret brain of the underworld activities and Winthrop has him killed, John takes the district attorneyship to avenge his friend. Snuggles, Gunner’s girl, threatens to inform on Winthrop unless John releases Gunner, and he concedes; John is about to resign when Snuggles, rejected by her man, confesses.” Screenplay credits went to Charles Furthman, and title credits to Herman J. Mankiewicz.

The “gangster film” (as we know it today) more-or-less began with Paramount’s Underworld (1927). Though there were earlier crime films, the Joseph von Sternberg directed Underworld set the tone for many of the genre films which followed, namely Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932).

With the surprising success of Underworld, Paramount quickly put another crime film into production, namely The City Gone Wild. The film, originally titled First Degree Murder, was meant as a vehicle for leading man Thomas Meighan, who in 1927 saw his star start to fade. To boost his career, Paramount paired Meighan with a topical story “ripped from the headlines,” a first rate director (James Cruze), and popular supporting actors (including Louise Brooks). Also assigned to The City Gone Wild were individuals who had worked on Underworld, namely writer Charles Furthman, cinematographer Bert Glennon, and tough-guy actor Fred Kohler.

The two films, not surprisingly, were sometimes compared. Intoning the slang of the time, Variety wrote, “The gang stuff is a la Underworld — machine guns and plenty tough. The two main yeggs each have a moll carrying their gat in the pocketbook. Very authentic in these little details ….” Many focused on the acting and actors. The noted critic Ward M. Marsh of the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated, ” . . . pitting her against crookdom’s love of Louise Brooks brings out the worst in all of us. On the credit side is Miss Brooks and also Fred Kohler in a role paralleling his Mulligan in Underworld. They do excellent work.” The San Antonio Express echoed Marsh, “Although Meighan is featured in the cast, he has his co-stars, Louise Brooks, one of Paramount’s niftiest, and Fred Kohler, remembered for his great crook work in Rough Riders and Underworld.”



Critics noticed Brooks’ hard-boiled character, and the edge she brought to an otherwise atypical role. Radie Harris of the New York Morning Telegraph wrote, “Louise Brooks is in the cast and that is something to grow ecstatic about. Christened with the preposterous name of Snuggles Joy, she is the most entrancing crook that ever pulled a Holt. No wonder the city went wild.”

Gordon Hillman of the Boston Daily Advertiser wrote “Another distinct ornament of the cast is Louise Brooks, who lends considerable vividness to her portrait of a lady of the underworld. In fact, she gives so good an interpretation of the part that Marietta Millner, supposedly the feminine lead, actually relapses into only secondary importance.”


Brooks was so good that she out shown Millner, who had appeared earlier in the year with Meighan in the Cruze directed film We’re All Gamblers. “Louise Brooks, who plays the crook’s girl, is better looking, more attractive and a better actress than Marietta Millner, the district attorney’s jeune fille, and in real life Tommy probably would have preferred her to Marietta,” wrote Stanley Orne in the Portland Oregonian. “Louise Brooks, the pert flapper, completely shadows the more important role allotted to Marietta Millner, and the ‘girl of Gunner Gallagher’ brief as her part is, is a far more intriguing character than the society girl of Miss Millner,” added Leona Pollack of the Omaha World Herald.

The City Gone Wild was officially released November 12, 1927, with a stated length of 6 reels (5,408 feet), or approximately 60 minutes. [Pre-release Paramount production records list the film length at 6 reels (5,601 feet) for the domestic release, and 6 reels (5,390 feet) for the foreign release.] The film opened across the United States on November 6, 1927, with screenings in Atlanta, Georgia, Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California and elsewhere.


The City Gone Wild is considered lost. The film was shown in Fairbanks, Alaska as late as January, 1930, and was largely extant as recently as 1971. In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow wrote, “David Shepard, then with the American Film Institute’s archive program, had a list of 35mm nitrate prints held in a vault Paramount had forgotten it had. He asked me which title I would select, out of all of them, to look at right away. I said The City Gone Wild. He called Paramount to bring it out of the vaults for our collection that afternoon. The projectionist went to pick it up. ‘O, there was some powder on that,’ said the vault keeper ‘We threw it away.’ The film had been unspooled into a tank of water (recommended procedure for decomposing nitrate). Shepard complained officially to Paramount, who promised it would not happen again. He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.” In June of 2016, I spoke with David Shepard about the demise of the film. He confirmed this account, and  recalled grimly that Paramount would, at the time, discard any film which showed any degree of decomposition.


Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Canada,* China, Dutch Guiana (Suriname), Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (including England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). The film was occasionally shown in the United States as City Gone Wild (and at least once in Scotland under the title A City Gone Wild).

In the United States, the film was advertised under the title A Cidade que Enlouqueceu (Portuguese-language press).

Elsewhere, The City Gone Wild was shown under the title The City Gone Mad and La ciudad del mal (Argentina); Der Verbrecherkönig von Chicago (Austria); La cité maudite (Belgium); A cidade bulicosa (Brazil); La ciudad del mal (Chile); Mesto uplynulý divoký (Czechoslovakia); Storstadens svøbe! (Denmark); Het Kwaad eener Wereldstad (Dutch East Indies – Indonesia); La cité maudite and La Ville Maudite (France);  狂乱街 (Japan); Die Gottin der Sunde (Latvia); La onda del crimen (Mexico); Boeven en Burgers and Het Kwaad Eener Wereldstad (The Netherlands); Piraci Wielkiego Miasta (Poland); A Cidade Ruidosa (Portugal); Gonosztevok kiralya (Romania); La ciudad del mal (Spain); and La cité maudite (Switzerland).

* Except in Quebec, where the film was banned due to “too much shooting.”


The cast of The City Gone Wild is certainly an interesting one: it includes Thomas Meighan as John Phelan, Marietta Millner as Nada Winthrop, Louise Brooks as Snuggles Joy (Gunner Gallagher’s girlfriend), Fred Kohler as Gunner Gallagher, Duke Martin as Lefty Schroeder, Nancy Phillips as Lefty’s Girl, Wyndham Standing as Franklin Ames, Charles Hill Mailes as Luther Winthrop, King Zany as Bondsman, (renown boxer) Gunboat Smith as a Policeman, and Shirley Dorman in an uncredited role.


Interestingly believe-it-or-not, Meighan was Louise Brooks’ “uncle-in-law.” Meighan was married to Frances Ring, a Broadway stage actress and the sister of the popular entertainer Blanche Ring. Director Eddie Sutherland — Brooks’ husband at the time, was the nephew of both Meighan, as Sutherland’s mother, Julie, was a sister of Blanche and Frances Ring.


In the mid-1920s, Meighan became interested in Florida real estate after talking with his brother, who was a realtor. In 1925, Meighan bought property in Ocala, Florida (where scenes for the Eddie Sutherland-directed It’s the Old Army Game were shot). In 1927, he built a home in New Port Richey, Florida. It was there that he spent his winters and helped support a local movie theater, the Meighan Theatre, which was named in his honor. The Meighan Theatre opened July 1, 1926, with a showing of the Meighan movie The New Klondike, a film set against the backdrop of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Today, the renamed Richey Suncoast Theater is home to the annual Thomas Meighan film festival.

Notably, Meighan was involved in two of the more sensational happenings of the silent film era. In 1916, he was the sole witness to Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas’ secretive wedding. And in 1923, Meighan put up a large chunk of the bail money, and with the help of June Mathis and George Melford, and got Rudolph Valentino out of jail after he was charged with bigamy.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Happy birthday to Louise Brooks - the magnetism of the cinema

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LOUISE BROOKS,
who was born on this day in 1906 in Cherryvale,  Kansas

"Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. The poetry of Louise is the great poetry of rare loves, of magnetism, of tension, of feminine beauty as blinding as ten galaxial suns. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema." 


So said Ado Kyrou (1923-1985), a Greek-born filmmaker, writer, critic and associate of the Surrealists long resident in France. Kyrou was a contributor to the French film journal Positif, and the author of Amour - érotisme & cinéma (1957) and Le Surréalisme Au Cinéma (1963).

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

A hopeless song of love for Louise Brooks

Here are two version of the Louise Brooks inspired song, "Hopeless." The first is a video by Stuart Pound to a recording by the UK band Evangelista. The song dates from the 1990's, and is a tribute to Louise Brooks. The song is about an impossible love for Brooks, an impossible love
because she died in 1984.


Hopeless from Stuart Pound on Vimeo.

The second version is a live recording by the Great Admirers of the "Evangelista cult classic."
The video was shot at the Seven Stars pub in Bristol, England on a Sunday afternoon, June 22, 2008.
Sound by Alfie Kingston. Long live Lulu!

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